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Amnesty Accuses Israel of Using Human Shields in Gaza
JERUSALEM - Amnesty accused Israeli forces on Thursday of war crimes in Gaza, saying they used children as human shields and conducted wanton attacks on civilians, in a report rejected as "unbalanced" by Israel.
sraeli soldiers stand on a tank along the border with the Gaza Strip in February 2009. Amnesty International has accused Israeli forces of war crimes in Gaza, saying they used children as human shields and conducted wanton attacks on civilians, in a report rejected as "unbalanced" by Israel. (AFP photo) The London-based human rights group also accused Hamas of war crimes, but said it found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Gaza's Islamist rulers used civilians as human shields during Israel's massive 22-day offensive.
It reiterated its call for international arms embargoes against Israel and Hamas, and called for "criminal investigations in national courts" under universal jurisdiction wherever there is sufficient evidence of war crimes.
"Much of the destruction was wanton and resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects," Amnesty said in a report on the December-January war on the Gaza Strip.
In numerous cases, Israeli troops forced Palestinians to stay in one room of their home while turning the rest of the house into a base and sniper position, "effectively using the families, both adults and children, as human shields and putting them at risk," the group said.
"Intentionally using civilians to shield a military objective, often referred to as using 'human shields' is a war crime," Amnesty said.
One Palestinian was quoted as saying Israeli troops forced him to go into a house to check whether gunmen holed up inside were still alive. They were, and threatened to kill him if he returned. The soldiers later forced him to check on the fighters two more times.
The report said it found no evidence Palestinian fighters directed civilians to shield military objectives from attacks, forced them to stay in buildings used by militants or prevented them from leaving commandeered buildings.
But it said Palestinian armed groups fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel which "constitute war crimes."
Amnesty also accused Hamas of endangering Palestinian civilians by firing rockets from residential areas and storing weapons and ammunition there.
More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died during the offensive Israel launched in response to rocket fire by militants in the impoverished and overcrowded territory.
Amnesty said 300 children were among those killed.
It said hundreds of civilians were killed with high-precision weapons. "Others, including women and children, were shot at short range when posing no threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers," it said.
"Wilful killings of unarmed civilians are war crimes," Amnesty said.
It said Israel's use of white phosphorus shells was also a clear breach of international law.
White phosphorus is not illegal if used as a smokescreen in open areas "but it should not be used in a densely populated area as it was used here," said Donatella Rovera, who led an Amnesty mission to Gaza and southern Israel.
The Israeli military called the report "unbalanced" and "distorted."
"The slant of their report indicates that the organisation succumbed to the manipulations of the Hamas terror organisation," a statement said.
The military insisted its forces used "fighting methods and advanced technology to minimise harm to the civilian population while engaging terrorists who were operating from densely populated areas and using the local population as 'human shields'."
It also accused Amnesty of ignoring "the blatant violations of international law perpetrated by Hamas."
Hamas also sharply criticised the report.
"It falsely accuses Hamas while playing down the seriousness of the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation," Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamist movement.
"It puts the executioner and the victim on the same footing," he said.
41 Comments so far
Show AllI wonder how much coverage this will get on Fox News...
Israel would need a war crimes tribunal covering everything from the 1948 ethnic cleansing (Nakhba) to this. I wonder how many top-ranking Israelis would be left without prison sentences?
Israeli war crimes go much farther back than 1948, read your Bible.
Fox News? Rupert Murdoch is a Zionist.
Zionism and the religious right are joined at the hip.
Zionism and the religious right are joined at the hip pocket.
Our Senators and Congress Creatures are using We-The-People as diplomatic shields for this Genocidal Monstrosity.
Oh, by the way - Nearly a day after the detention of former US lawmaker Cynthia McKinney by Israeli forces, Washington has yet to make a reaction. Shades of USS Liberty?
I wonder how much revulsion the Obamabots will give it; given the preeminent human rights organization on the planet now links arms dealing as a human rights violation, i.e., anyone who participates is culpable including the beloved community organizer now turned killer commander and chief.
Is this new? Will something change? Will people now pay more attention to the latest intellectual's call (writer Naomi Klein) for a serious boycott of everything Israeli? The evidence of Israeli human right abuses has always been overwhelming, but much like the twisted taboo on holocaust revisionism, so goes the crimes of the Israelis.
Both Israel and Hamas are guilty of war crimes of using people as human shields. We must be willing to speak the truth and not just join White Nationalists who only blame Israel because they hate the Jews. The truth is that both sides are guilty of human rights violations and should both be held accountable.
You don't read do you? It says that ISRAEL was guilty of using human shields. there was NO evidence of hamas using human shields. Right now israel is the one that is violating ALL human rights law. Are you blaming the victim for the crimes of the aggressor? Sounds like a typical zionist logic.
Here's what Hamas MP Fathi Hammad said in February 2008. Quite clear, I think.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=aea_1231799681
"White Nationalists who only blame Israel because they hate the Jews"? The conflation of criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews is a canard behind which Zionists hide when the actions of Israel are judged objectively to be immoral and criminal. Is there blame on both sides? Of course. Killing is reprehensible no matter the perpetrator. The problem for you, Chrisy, is that Israel is the provocateur who both instigates and initiates the vast majority of the violence and then cries foul when a desperate response of a caged, dehumanized population follows. This provides you and your self-righteous kin a false justification to disproportionately escalate the killing using all the modern technology and cowardly tactics (human shields, using Palestinian children!) at your disposal. Israel, if not born as one, has become a rogue nation which provides ample argument against its own right to exist.
Do you really mean to imply that Amnesty International is acting out of hatred for Jews? Israel is being blamed because its actions make it blameworthy. Overwhelmingly more than its victims.
Oh, look. The anti-Semitic BS.
This is how it works:
IF you hate Jews but like Israel, you are not anti-Semitic, and the Zionists will aggressively promote you. Like the religious right wing.
IF you are for the rights and human dignity of ALL people, including both Jews AND Palestinians, THEN YOU ARE PUBLICLY DEMONIZED AS ANTI-SEMITIC AND YOUR CAREER IS DESTROYED.
Lovely people, those Zionists. All meaning has been sucked out of the term anti-Semitic.
"...But it said Palestinian armed groups fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel which "constitute war crimes."
Proportionality, Proportionality, Proportionality - these so-called "rockets", more glorified fireworks than weapons, caused fifteen deaths in ten years. Compare that to the thousands of Palestinians murdered by the Israelis during the same period.
The Israeli propaganda machine executed a very successful campaign about these "murderous rockets" and remnants of that campaign still linger.
Jihadists banging at the Door
That's right! How dare Israel strike back at a terror organization on its border with "out of proportion" force?
Let me ask you, if a mad man is banging on the door of your home and he is declaring his fanatical intent to kill you and your family, what should you do? Well obviously, call 911 and get the police to your home ASAP. Now think! Do you tell the police, it's only one mad man, so, only one police officer will be required? Or, do you insist the police bring all the resources available to stop this mad man intent of your family’s murder?
This is no different from the circumstances that Israel has been in for over 60 years. There have been mad men at their border threatening to kill the Jews and destroy Israel. As outcome from the Jews historical experience with comparable threats, they know full well that they cannot rely on ANYONE else for their self-defense.
HAMAS, Hezbollah, PIJ, PLFP, PLFP GC, Tanzim, PRC, and a myriad of Jihadist terror-gangs are committed to Israel’s destruction. These are the mad men banging on Israel's door threatening to kill. They are so determined to kill Jews that they have indoctrinated their children to embrace being Shahid (see Al-Minar TV children's programming) and become martyrs in the cause of Jihad. This perverse (kamikaze) logic betrays their own people and deploys "civilians" as cannon fodder for the cause. HAMAS knows full well that by leveraging the MSM with the grotesque images of their "shahids" that they can manipulate world opinion. It's working quite well!
So, the next time there is a lunatic at your door, proclaiming his intent to kill your family, think about how many police officers you want to arrive to stop him in his Jihad. So much for proportionality.
Conversely, would Israel’s actions be acceptable to YOU if the HAMAS rockets and mortar rounds into Israel (over 8000 in the past 5 years) were more effective in their death count of Jews? What are you thinking? As you ponder this twisted notion, do not forget that the declared intent of HAMAS (mad man at the door), as per their Charter, is to kill Jews and destroy Israel. Is this the side YOU are supporting? Think about it! Who is Israel to negotiate with? Which one of the myriad of terror gangs speaks for the Palestinians? Which one speaks for YOU? Which terror gang (mad man at the door) do you find acceptable. Or, do YOU simply want Israel to be destroyed? These are the choices. You decide. Zero sum conflict resolution. Unfortunately, either you support Israel's right to exists, or, you support those which are (mad men at the door) dedicated to.... well YOU know what the Jihadists want. Or, do you…………….?
You Zionists have ridden off the rails.
Israel is an immoral and illegal invasion, and it is the right of those oppressed by the genocidal occupation to resist.
Zionism is a moral monstrosity. The world would be better off without it.
Maybe you need to ask the question, "Why do they hate us?" If you answered honestly, you would realize that for over 60 years, you have provided Palestinians with justifiable hatred toward Israel through your land-grabbing, forced evictions, massacres, destruction of homes, livelihoods and communities, imprisonment, theft, harassment, assassination, humiliation, and murder. All committed with a smug arrogance and a sense of entitlement, superiority and self-righteousness. If there is a mad man at your door, he is simply responding to invitations you have been sending for decades.
This logic can be applied in both ways, mind you. One can easily go back 50, 60, 70, 80 years and do that honestly. But for now let me suggest that you ask yourself several questions related to the more recent history and answer these questions honestly. Why did Israel build a wall around the west bank (a move that was strongly opposed to by those who believe that Israel should continue to control these areas forever), why is there a blockade on Gaza? Why did Israel go back into Gaza after evacuating it completely in 2004?
Do you know how many Israelis were killed by Palestinians in the last ten years? Do you care?
And here come the righteous zionist fool with his revisionist history and fairy tales....
BTW, I am still waiting for you to show me where Israel recognizes Palestine????
There is no such nation as Palestine! That option was "pissed-away" when the Arabs refused to accept the 1947 UN partion plan and proclaimed their intent to "..push the Jews into the sea..". There do exist negotiated cease-fire lines as outcome of the various Arab state's series of failed efforts to attack and destroy Israel. Research (Google) the origins of "Palestina". It was the name that the Romans imposed on the Jewish nation in the first century AD upon conquering Israel.
And what should you do when the mad man is at your door, bulldozing down the house, bullozing over people, strapping your grandchildren to tanks and armed vehicles?
We've all seen the videoclips on youtube showing IDF detroying habitations - and laughing! Having a jolly old time while lives and hope are destroyed.
Did those other goons long ago laugh this hard on Kristallnacht?
Put away the mishigass about "right to exist". It exists. Period. No other nation on this planet makes such a ridiculous and superfluous demand. It's the mouseprint - the corollaries and the "therefores" that are a problem with that. It's a disingeuous claim.
The people who could legitimately make such a request are the Palestinians.
Nobody wants Israel detroyed. (ok, only lunatics) Everyone wants Israel to play fair. And to stop with the guilt-trip already.
The Israelis needed the rocket attacks, and have probably even managed to pay or otherwise induce non-Hamas or Fatah groups to break the truce in order to have the excuse for their ground, sea and air attack on Gaza.
This whole rocket thing is a propaganda canard, typical of Israeli "defending" itself with resolve. There are perfectly proven defence systems to these slow and minimally lethal rockets, or mortars including tactical lazars like TALON Systems, and the Phalanx guns used at most US bases in Iraq, and for ship board defences etc. Israel has their own Iron Dome system which they conveniently say is not ready for deployment till later this year.
Using a tactic of defence that does quite so much damage to civilians, and non-military infrastucture to protect against some small rockets, is the exact meaning of “disproportional” and constitutes in of itself a war crime.
In any case, Israel did not need to brake the truce that was in place before the attack and they could have renewed it as offered by Hamas. Oh, but of course they cannot talk to terrorists.
Israel, is a pathetic little entity of 7 million people, having the 4th most powerful military in the world, run by sociopaths and criminals who like killing non-jews to get more land. It can only go on doing its evil because it is supported in its crimes by the US government. The problem starts and finishes in Washington.
The idea that the people defending themselves and their people in any way they can against this modern state terrorist aggressor, invader, occupier and torturer, should be judged by the same measure is just farcical.
Exactly. So bad that a few women even fainted!
Compare that to thousands of Palestinians murdered in 3 weeks. and the campaign had been planned - coldly - months in advance, not in response to any hostility. Amounts to a canned hunt.
True, the rockets are rather imprecise, the south of Israel is sparsely populated, and most people have access to shelters. Yet 3000 mortar and rocket attacks in 2008 caused a lot of damage, wounded many people, and killed 4 people in Israel before the beginning of operation in Gaza. These attacks completely disrupted life in the South of Israel, and Hamas was making every possible effort to increase the range, accuracy, and number of weapons in its possession. So it seems that you're not against violence, you're only against violence towards Palestinians. When Hamas had the opportunity to do so, they killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in deadly bombing attacks on buses, shopping malls, cafes and restaurants. I suppose that you don't call that murder, that's resistance, right?
BOTH the people of Palestine and Israel deserve to live in their own states in peace and dignity. Selltlements should be relocated within Israel and ALL Palestinians should recocognize the right of Israel to exist. Insane crimes against humanity should cease on BOTH sides. Ideally Jerusalem could be an open city fully available to all. STOP THE MADNESS!
BOTH the people of Palestine and Israel deserve to live in their own states in peace and dignity. Selltlements should be relocated within Israel and ALL Palestinians should recocognize the right of Israel to exist. Insane crimes against humanity should cease on BOTH sides. Ideally Jerusalem could be an open city fully available to all. STOP THE MADNESS!
Re shach July 2nd, 2009 12:56 pm, who demands that
"ALL Palestinians should recocognize (sic) the right of Israel to exist."
As chet380 says, "proportionality." Where is the pressure for Israel to recognize the right of Palestine to exist?
Palestinians deserve to live in their own state in peace and dignity.
The "people of Israel" (Jews?) had their chance, and they pissed it away.
Let Israel sink of its own accord. After what they've done to us, the only MADNESS is giving them another penny.
A seventeen-year-old Palestinian girl has reportedly been killed and four others have suffered wounds in Israeli tank fire in the Gaza Strip.
Latest news on the McKinney front:
About an hour ago an associate of Cynthia McKinney spoke with an official at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv who stated that Cynthia McKinney and the other 20 human rights activists can be released from prison if they sign a statement of guilt in violating Israel’s territorial waters, which of course they are refusing to sign.
Recognize Israel's right to exist ????
Which Israel ? ? ?
Israel has NEVER declared its borders and Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion infamously proclaimed,
“To maintain the status quo will not do. We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion.”
This resulted in the Israeli Jews 60 year quest for "peace".
Quote ---
" We must define our position and lay down basic principles for a settlement.
Our demands should be moderate and balanced, and appear to be reasonable.
But in fact they must involve such conditions as to ensure that the enemy rejects them.
Then we should manoeuvre and allow him to define his own position, and reject a settlement on the basis of a compromise position.
We should then publish his demands as embodying unreasonable extremism."
By: Yehoshafat Harkabi--Date: 2 November 1973 ! ! ! !
This appeared in Ma'ariv on 2 November 1973. The quoted was cited on page 181 of the third edition of "The Gun and the Olive Branch."
http://tinyurl.com/2qbzf3
Like many quotes of Ben-Gurion in Palestinian propaganda, your quote is incorrect, taken completely out of context, and misleading. The 1951 text from which it originates doesn't deal at all with territorial issues.
Here is the paragraph from which the quote is taken (from "Rebirth and Destiny of Israel")
"Our code must be framed to speed the absorption of immigrants into our economy, culture and society; to fuse the returning tribes into a homogeneous national and cultural unit; to forward our physical and moral healing and the cleansing of our lives from the trivia and dross which gathered upon us in dependence and exile. To maintain the status quo will not do. We have set up a dynamic State, bent upon creation and reform, building and expansion. Laws which lag behind development, merely a digest of experience and the lessons of the past, are useless to us. We need to anticipate the character of the times, discern embryonic forms emergent or renewed, and clear the path for circumstantial change..."
and, incidentally, here is part of the following paragraph:
"We have rebelled against all controls and religions, all laws and judgments which the mighty sought to foist upon us. We kept to our dedication and our missions. By these will the State be judged, by the moral character it imparts to its citizens, by the human values determining its inner and outward relations, and by its fidelity, in thought and act, to the supreme behest: 'and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Here is crystallized the eternal law of Judaism, and all the written ethics in the world can say no more. The State will be worthy of its name only if its systems, social and economic, political and legal, are based upon these imperishable words. They are more than a formal precept which can be construed as passive or negative: not to deprive, not to rob, not to oppress, not to hurt..."
I don't know much about the other quote. From a web search I gather that it is part of a newspaper article published by Harkabi in 1973. At that time Yehoshafat Harkabi (a former general in the IDF) was a professor in the department of international relations of the Hebrew university in Jerusalem.
By Ben Gurion's standards, then, Israel is a failed state.
By my standards, whoever generated that quote is a manipulative liar.
I was referring to YOUR citation of Ben Gurion.
I was referring to YOUR citation of Ben Gurion. You know, all that "love thy neighbor" crap, don't deprive, don't oppress, don't rob , all those other quaint notions that never really meant anything to the Zionists from day one.
Wow, that was a quick and detailed reply, mahmed. You must have huge databanks there in your propaganda command center.
Lebensraum/Illegal settlements
Chosen People/Master Race
What's the difference?
"In blockaded Gaza, Israeli tanks kill again
A seventeen-year-old Palestinian girl has reportedly been killed and four others have suffered wounds in Israeli tank fire in the Gaza Strip."
Was this human sacrifice in payment for the $9 Billion loan guarantee our government gave the Zionists?
It's high time to 'remove' all the un-settlers from occupied Palestine. I'd send Robert Pickton to do it.
Having read in the past several of your posts, Humbaba, I'm not surprised by your choice of imagery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton
So much for the claim that "eliminating Israel" stands for something other than "kill the Jews".